Apparently I always have an opinion on something though hopefully that doesn't mean it's knee-jerk or simplistic. I guess this is a way of helping to start to write fiction or just a cheap form of therapy.

Monday, December 13, 2010

When I was a kid, my mum was always harping on at me to at least be honest with myself. It was a pretty see-through attempt to get me to tell her the truth when she thought I was trying one on, but nevertheless it really stuck with me. I don't have to always like myself but I do make a constant effort to know myself.

"Do unto others..." is another edict that I lived by that made me feel that I was still Christian in nature, if no longer in beliefs. I have since had to revise that commandment as I came to realise that people have different comfort zones and sensitivities & that it was important to respect that. When I was younger, I assumed that if I would be comfortable with something then other people would be too. And that it wasn't my problem if people were more uptight than I was. I was generous by nature so share and share alike, right? Which is bullshit. Not least because I never seemed to have much to share, at least in the material sense.

Over the years I learned not to be offended when someone seemed a lot more stingy than I or less accessible. I used to hate the saying, "Variety is the spice of life" because people would invariably incant it when I was bitching about what a dick someone was. But I learned to try to respect everyone's individuality, if increasingly from a distance.

The truth is that as I have gotten older, I have well and truly gotten grumpier, despite all my (minimal) attempts to exercise tolerance. (Though I did get a tattoo of the Japanese/Chinese symbol of love to remind me not to be such a bitch; and to remind myself that since I believed that the average person is an idiot, if people were getting on my nerves more than usual then the issue lay with me.) In theory, I honestly believe to each their own; in reality, I am more than happy to live and let live, as long as I don't have to suffer their company.

I am a snob. Well, that's not all I am but, thanks to my mum, I believe you should call yourself on your own bullshit. While I'm at it, I'm also a bitch, lazy, shallow, thoughtless, insensitive, unsociable, obnoxious, critical, angry and self-centered. I am also the exact opposite of all those things. I can be very dual in nature. Something I attribute in part to my dual ethnicity and the two worlds I have occupied. That and I'm a bit mental. While I can sometimes come off as reluctant to mingle and socialise, it is in part a consequence of my need to have true and honest communication and debate. I guess, deep and meaningfuls but not always. (Trust me.) I find it hard to build up to it. I find it hard to put in the apparently requisite hours of small talk. It is of little consequence to me how long we have known each other.

So to some degree, I am a snob because I can be a little too intense for people to handle & they withdraw or react badly. But I am also a snob because I find a lot of people unimaginative, unintelligent, unconscious and uninspired a lot of the time. Sometimes all at once. I have tried to accommodate my own issues by avoiding people and situations that annoy me. Suffice it to say, my world has gotten a lot smaller. It may have also been my mum who told me that only boring people get bored, which was something that I dismissed as pat and untrue. But it might actually be the case that my aversion to boring people has made me bored and my life boring.

4 comments:

I like your post. I have needed forty years to realize that people are different. What I mean is that people want different things, have different goals,,, Now, after trying to understand for years, I know that people feel the life in a different way.Some people hope money to be their objective, though this idea is crazy.

Thank you!! I was unsure as how this particular post would come across (plus it is the only one that's totally personal) but figured that as long as I was totally honest then it wasn't my problem if people didn't like it. Hope you read some more posts :)

I believe tolerance, acepting others as they are, is important. Normally, this would come with age ... not always. This doesn't mean that you must not have your own opinions on things, just accept that your ideas may not be the only true ones. Analyzing yourself, as you do here, is probably a good step to learn to live together with or at least accept others, who may be different from you. Fortunately we are not all the same. That might be boring!

Oh I totally agree! I'm just a bit of a brat :)And I often find that I am reacting to the fact that a lot of people can't seem to deal an idea or opinion not held by the majority. And I definitely march to the beat of a different drum. Which is not always easy.And I love when I am proven wrong about someone or something. Reminds me that I need to sharpen up my game!